Part I. Intellectual property in America : the idea and its merits -- Unfair competition and trademarks -- Patents, copyright and neighboring rights -- Exclusivity versus appropriation : some questions and costs -- "Exclusive rights" and the Constitution -- Part II. Intellectual productivity and freedom of expression -- Foreshadows : International News Service versus the Associated Press -- Intellectual productivity and freedom of expression : the conditions of their coexistence -- Part III. The First Amendment in America : some chapters in a history of debate -- The origins of the First Amendment and the question of original meaning -- The Sedition Act of 1798 and the first First Amendment crisis -- Justice Holmes and the arrival of balancing -- Justice Black and the absolute First Amendment -- Part IV. The absolute First Amendment revisited : the amendment as a prohibition on power -- Constitutional absolutes in a Holmesian world -- Forward to the eighteenth century -- Part V. Summing up -- Intellectual property in the image of an absolute First Amendment